Summary: The Ombudsman has discontinued his investigation of this complaint. This is because the substantive matter, a grant of planning permission, is now subject to court proceedings, and so is outside the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction.

The complaint

1. The complainant, to whom I will refer as Mr N, says the Council has wrongly granted planning permission for a large-scale housing development near his home. In particular, he says an error by the Council means it was forced to allow the developer to build on protected open land.
2. Mr N complains the approved development will lead to a loss of open land, and an unsustainable impact on local amenities.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
4. We cannot investigate a complaint about the start of court action or what happened in court. (Local Government Act 1974, Schedule 5/5A, paragraph 1/3, as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I reviewed the Council’s response to Mr N’s complaint, the case officer’s report and other associated planning documents, and viewed a video of the Council’s Planning Committee meeting where the application was discussed.
6. I also shared a draft copy of this decision with each party for their comments.

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What I found

7. In 2018, a developer applied for permission to build a large-scale housing development near Mr N’s home. The Council refused permission, because part of the application site was designated as Other Protected Open Land (OPOL).
8. In 2019, the developer resubmitted the application. Since its previous decision, the Council had concluded its OPOL policy no longer carried significant legal weight. This was because it could not demonstrate an adequate five-year housing supply, which meant, under national guidance, its OPOL and similar policies became less important.
9. The Council’s case officer recommended approval of the application. It was discussed at a meeting of the Council’s Planning Committee on 1 July. After heated discussion, the Committee voted to approve the application.
10. Mr N says, having made a Freedom of Information request to the Council, he obtained documents which showed an error by the Council. This was that the Council had insisted the developer pay the full amount to create a new road to serve the development, where in fact the Council had a legal duty to partially fund the road.
11. Because of this, Mr N says the developer had successfully argued it must build more houses (including on the OPOL) to mitigate the cost of the road. Mr N considers, had the Council not made the alleged error, the approved development would be considerably smaller.

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Analysis

12. Since accepting Mr N’s complaint for investigation, the Council has informed us the grant of planning permission is subject to Judicial Review (JR) proceedings. The JR has been brought by a Councillor (not a member of the Planning Committee) on behalf of a local pressure group.
13. Although Mr N is not, himself, party to the JR proceedings, this still brings the matter outside the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction, for the reasons given at paragraph 4. The substantive matter has been put to the courts for deliberation, which means the Ombudsman can longer investigate it.
14. I must therefore discontinue my investigation.

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Final decision

15. I have discontinued my investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman